Tag Archives: Bladnoch

Whisky geeks with good memories will remember David Driscoll of K&L making some impolitic remarks about Bladnoch a couple of years ago (first on his blog and then in an attempt to defend them on the WWW forum). Among his claims were that Bladnoch’s reputation was poor and that the Armstrongs’ “blending skills” for what they’d put out themselves had not been strong either. This was news to most of us as a) Bladnoch seemed to us like one of the most grounded and solid distilleries in Scotland: putting out quality malt at excellent prices with no marketing nonsense; and b) Bladnoch’s various “sheep” and “cow” label releases had been very well received in the main.

Of course, the subtext, as always with Driscoll, was that it was K&L that was going to release the first good OB Bladnochs. When K&L’s casks did show up my plan was to ignore them—I have a number of other Bladnochs already on my shelf. But when I saw this 11 yo lightly peated in the lineup I couldn’t resist. I really enjoyed this Armstrong release of a 9 yo lightly peated cask and hoped this would be as good. I’m sorry to say it wasn’t. Continue reading →

I certainly hope that you don’t remember that a bit over a year ago I split a bunch of Scott’s Selection bottles on sale at a Minneapolis store with some friends and that Michael Kravitz (who was among that number) and I simul-reviewed some of them. This bottle was purchased from that very same store a year later and also split with friends; and while Michael K is again one of those who got part of this bottle we are not simul-reviewing it this year. This is because he now has a small child of his own which raises the number of distracted parties in the planning of any such possible undertaking from one to two.

This is yet another of the Scott’s bottlings released in the mid-2000s that is still around in the US (stores from coast to coast have a number of these second and third-tier distillery bottles, often close to original prices). I’ve passed on it in the past because I never could find any information on it. Now I hope to be the source of such information for you if you too have occasionally paused in front of a bottle in a store, stared at if for a while and then moved on to a safer purchase.

On a melancholy note: Scott’s Selection is now defunct and the fate of Bladnoch continues to be up in the air. I’ll drink to both tonight.